Hybrid work may worsen sleep quality, researcher says

From playcrazygame.com

The trend towards the definitive adoption of the hybrid work model, the one that alternates between face-to-face activities with the home office it can cause difficulties for people to sleep regularly and even increase or cause insomnia. According to researchers at the Instituto do Sono, this work model brings an additional challenge, which consists of changing the time between the days of face-to-face activities with home office. While on face-to-face work days, the person needs more time between waking up and arriving at the workplace, staying at home can extend the hours of sleep.

In addition to breaking the bedtime and waking up routine, hybrid work can spoil the quality of sleep due to the fact that working on a remote system, people divide their time at home between work, children’s studies and domestic routine, dividing the day. of eight hours throughout the day to be able to perform all the tasks, a habit already observed during the pandemic period, when work was being carried out only remotely. “And the companies made their work more flexible, they were no longer afraid to send a email at midnight, waiting for an answer,” said Gabriel Natan Pires, a biomedical doctor and researcher at the Instituto do Sono.

According to him, to maintain a good quality of sleep, the individual needs to follow a routine with certain times for leisure, work, food and rest and not following these habits can even result in negative effects on the immune system. “It’s as if our brain needed clues to understand when it’s time to sleep and when it’s time to wake up,” he says.

According to Pires, in the days of home office, the worker can even sleep a little more because he won’t have to face the traffic to get to work, but it is important that he starts and finishes work at the same times. “This scheme will work if the corporation takes care of the employee’s mental health and the professional does not give up his sleep to increase productivity. Even because it’s a utopia to work until 11 pm and think that at 11:05 pm you’ll be sleeping”.

He points out that another challenge for hybrid work is having an adequate work environment at home so as not to harm health and maintain routine. Those who are already prone to insomnia need to maintain regular work and healthy habits, because any slight alteration can worsen the condition. “It is necessary to have a rule to see if this person who is willing to hybrid work can really adapt to this. The idea is that people who cannot, prefer office work because if the uncertain routine affects sleep, be in the office can be less harmful”.

Pires stressed that it is necessary for the worker and the company to negotiate the most comfortable way for productivity to be maintained, but the availability for this varies according to the management’s ideology. “There are companies that have a more traditional view and do not accept that employees choose their working hours. Flexibility is important because there are people with a physiological tendency to wake up and sleep later, as there are those who wake up and sleep earlier. morning and evening people. That’s a normal variation.”

Remote work and insomnia

According to Pires, the covid-19 pandemic has generated another pandemic, that of insomnia, with at least 60% of people having their sleep impaired either because of anxiety due to the health crisis or due to changes in routine. At first, the perception was that working at home could help people sleep better, because theoretically they could choose their working hours and would not spend time commuting, which did not happen.

“It’s one thing to work at home because you chose it, another is to want to work because it was imposed, knowing that I don’t have a suitable environment and that I have to stay locked up, just like my children who can’t go to school. It wasn’t a remote job. This changed the routine and sleep lost space because work at home without rules tore it up and extended the workday, which ran out of time to finish”.

One of the main problems with sleep is when you take your work to the bedroom, especially for those with insomnia, because for natural and quality sleep to happen, the brain needs to slow down little by little. Working even before bedtime, you take all of this to bed and at the time when the brain should slow down the person is taking the stress which re-accelerates it, generating a reaction similar to that of stress post traumatic, he said.

“If I started taking my cell phone to bed and I started to stress, over time my brain will associate my bed with an environment of stress. relaxation, not now,” he explained.

Pires said that no type of induced sleep is recommended and that although sleep is a complex brain process, it needs to happen naturally. So it is necessary to understand that sleep should be a priority on the agenda and that the person is not sleep deprived. “If I understand that I want to sleep around 10pm, I must understand that from 8pm onwards I have to start slowing down. Sleep has to be allowed and natural.”

Worsening of sleep

A survey by the Instituto do Sono revealed that 55.1% had a worsening of their sleep pattern during the covid-19 pandemic, a period in which remote work predominated. In addition to the increase in concerns, the change in routine was one of the reasons mentioned by more than 1,600 survey participants, who also mentioned fear of falling ill, financial insecurity and distance from family and friends.

According to data from the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA), in the most acute phase of the pandemic, 11% of Brazilians joined remote work, totaling 8.4 million people in 2020. Of this percentage, 63.9% were from the initiative of which 51% were linked to education, 38.8% to the financial sector and 34.7% to communication activities.

Tips to ensure a good night’s sleep

– Keep a routine: set times for sleep, food, exercise, leisure, work and family activities.

– Find a specific place to work: find a place in the house to perform your professional duties. If possible, avoid choosing the room. It is important for the brain to associate the bedroom as an environment for rest and tranquility, not a stressful activity.

– Don’t take the notebook or cell phone to bed: the excess of interactivity and the light from the screens of these devices interfere with sleep.

– Slow down before bed: at least an hour before going to bed, do a relaxing activity: take a shower, read, listen to music, do meditation or any other activity that helps you to slow down.

– Avoid heavy foods and caffeinated beverages: eat light meals up to two hours before bedtime. Do not drink coffee, energy drinks and black tea and other infusions that contain caffeine at night.

– Expose your body to light in the morning: open the windows, walk through the garden or the backyard. That way you show your brain that it’s day and therefore time to work.

– Know your chronotype: the circadian cycle, which comprises wakefulness and sleep, lasts about 24 hours. Each person has their own preferred times for sleeping and waking up. Chronotype is our circadian preference profile.

https://playcrazygame.com/2021/10/24/hybrid-work-may-worsen-sleep-quality-researcher-says/